MILITARY CQC: “The Fear State”

Author: Odhinn Kohout

This lesson will provide you with some basic fundamentals on field of fire but I will not be covering specifics to any degree as this is open source material. Contact me to book a course for your group and we will give you an extensive and in depth hostage escape program.

The central position or 12 o’clock (as the Attacker faces you) must be avoided at all costs. This impacts knife defense and the understanding of arch of fire conceptualization. The central position is a “source of comfort” for the armed and untrained I.E. criminal element.

 

 

The Attacker is counting on fear and its psychological ramifications to disrupt your cognitive processes to the point that compliance as an end state is achieved. The “reactive” response to having a firearm pointed at you is in point of fact the ultimate fight/flight mechanism of delivery for utter obedience of your Attacker’s commands.

The civilian mindset or “untrained” mindset must not be allowed to permeate the true survival or “offensive” mindset of a front-line Officer. The Gladiators of old had an excellent way of preparing the mind for battle and it is rarely used as an example when explaining our modern curriculum for combat readiness in today’s CQC.

Here is the secret:

The body and mind must encounter the same stress as that of a worst case scenario in order to be able to access fine and complex motor skills. The Samurai held to this belief and referred to it as the Bushido Code. Proverbs 27:17 tells us that “Iron Sharpens Iron.”

Our Warriors in Special Operations adhere to this and put this this theory into practice similar to the ancient Spartans. 

“If the body is weak, so is the mind.”

In the above scenario transitioning from the field of fire which is at 12 o’clock is intrinsically woven into the fabric of your ability to do so. This is not an existential explanation but rooted in the fact that if you are “frozen with fear” your techniques are without a context. It is therefore imperative that “serious” training mirrors reactions of the sympathetic nervous system to induced stress in order to test comprehension as part of any possible field application.

 Training MUST address worst case scenarios to ensure the highest standards of Officer Safety as opposed to being fixated on possible litigious ramifications. Your students are depending on YOU to have THEIR best interests in mind…

Be safe Gentlemen.